OSI Software Find!

Well, since my C4P-MF has been rock solid stable since I fitted the new power supply and cleaned the drive head, I've been going through a bunch of 25 (and more) year old diskettes to see just what I have. Lo-and-behold! On a diskette simply labeled OS65D 3.2 (not originally mine, acquired I don't know where), I found really nice machine code implementations of Space Invaders and Asteroids! You don't usually see machine code programs on OSI diskettes, the OS was too crude to have a simple binary loader. Diskettes usually have BASIC programs, with maybe a couple of USR$ sub-routines in data statements. To load and execute the programs, you have to EXIT from BASIC into the sub-monitor and then load the diskette tracks into memory one at a time. Once you have it loaded, then you GO to the starting address. I think that these programs might have been originally intended to be loaded from cassette tape. Fortunately, the diskette had two BASIC programs, each of which PRINTs the instructions for loading the machine code programs. I'm really happy about this! People usually see OSI boxes running rather slow interpreted BASIC programs. These two programs show just what an OSI box can do. There is no attribution for the Asteroids program, but the Space Invaders is copyright 1980 by Michael Kincaid. Can't wait to show these at TCF! Bill